A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

One thing that's been said about anthropologists is that, essentially, by going into "primitive" cultures and gathering information, they are "scouts" for the dominant: culture, leading the way toward the destruction of indigenous people.

Trinh:

There is some truth to that metaphor, although it is a dangerous one because none of us who have gone to the cultures in question can claim to be free of that effect. I would use another metaphor: sometimes anthropologists act as if they were fishermen. They select a location, position themselves as observers and then throw a net, thinking that they can thereby catch what they look for. I think the very premise of such an approach is illusory, If I apply that metaphor to myself, I have to be

the net,

a net with no fisherman, for I'm caught in it as much as what I try to catch. And I am caught with everyting that I try to bring out in my films.

MacDonald:

You were saying yesterday that some people who like the African films were unpleasantly surprised by

Surname Viêt Given Name Nam

. There are common elements in all three films, but your decision to explore what we might consider your own experience, your own heritage, requires you to more obviously distance yourself, to more overtly question your own position of authority with regard to your culture. One of the centers of the film is the set of interviews that were originally recorded in Vietnamese by someone else, then translated into French, and are finally reenacted in your film by women who have come to the United States from Vietnam. In at least one sense, the film is more about the process of translating meaning from one culture to another than it is about Vietnam.

Trinh:

You raise several questions. That some poeple are reacting differently to my last film is true, but I would not say this is only due to a difference between my African films and this film. There has already been a split reaction between

Reassemblage

and

Naked Spaces

. A num-

Page 375

From Trinh's

Surname Viêt Given Name Nam

 (1989).

ber of people who really loved

Reassemblage

had problems with

Naked Spaces

when it first came out. I guess everything has its own time. When

Reassemblage

was released, I had to wait a whole year before the film really started circulating and before I got any positive feedback from viewers. It was such a hopeless situation, for I was piling up, one after the other, rejections from film festivals and other film programs. People "didn't know what to do" with such a film; it was totally misunderstood. Then unexpectedly, the film started being picked up simultaneously in diverse places. Viewers were bewildered but enthusiastic. This unanticipated circulation of the film continues to expand. A somewhat similar process happened with

Naked Spaces

. Although the film got to be shown almost immediately to some packed audiences, the disappointment from those who came expecting another

Reassemblage

was quite apparent. Most of the praise and positive reactions I obtained in the first few months were from people who had not seen

Reassemblage

. One sympathetic viewer at a festival told me that when she shared with others her admiration for the film, she was told that she should see

Reassemblage

first before offering any comment.

Reassemblage

had become a model! And yet, since then, I have had very, very moving and elating feedback on

Naked Spaces

sometimes well beyond any expectations I had for that film.

Page 376

MacDonald:

Was the objection some people had to

Naked Spaces

the fact that it is less overtly feminist than

Reassemblage,

that it doesn't put the role of women in African cultures in the foreground as obviously as the earlier film.

Trinh:

I don't think so. The most obvious problem people have with

Naked Spaces

is the length. The notion of time and of duration are worked on in a way that makes the experience quite excruciating for some. Time not only as the result of editing, but time made apparent within the frame itself by the camera's slow unstable movement across people and their spaces, by the quiescence and contemplative quality of many of the scenes shown, and moreover by the lack of a central story line or guiding message. Moviegoers do not mind sitting a couple of hours for a narrative feature. But to go through two hours and fifteen minutes of a nonaction film with no love story, no violence, and "no sex" (as a viewer reminded me) is a real trial for many and a "far out," unforgettable experience for others. It was important for me, on the one hand, to bring back a notion of time in Africa that never failed to frustrate foreigners eager to consume the culture at a time-is-money pace (one of them warned a newcomer: "You need immense, unlimited patience here!